6 Google-Approved Tools that Take Your Analytics Data to New Heights

Before Google Analytics, businesses were in the dark about their audiences and the ways in which audience members behave. Who are you looking to attract to your site and what are they doing when they arrive? Without Analytics, there wasn’t really a good way to answer that question.

Some 11 years later, and Google Analytics is well established as the industry standard. While it's difficult to say without final confirmation from Google, expert third-party estimates claim that up to 52.9% of all websites use the tool.

As much of a breakthrough as Google Analytics has been for businesses, it does have its flaws. The way it profiles specific visitors can be vague, event tracking is a pain to set up if you're not a technical expert, and it doesn't play nicely with CRMs – not by default, anyway.

The good news is that Google has taken steps to improve the service by opening up their tools to outside developers and service providers, making Analytics into an ecosystem-friendly platform rather than a standalone app. The newly rebooted Google Analytics Partners program is a great way to see which of these guys have Google's seal of approval.

Let’s take a look at six Google-approved tools that let you do more with your data.

1. Leadfeeder reveals the companies that your site's anonymous visitors work for

Sales and marketing cycles are long in the B2B sphere. When a lead lands on your site, unless they're ready to buy or extremely interested in your solutions, they're unlikely to leave their contact details. That's a problem that's been picked at by millions of marketers for as long as the internet has existed.

With Leadfeeder, you can see what companies your anonymous site visitors work for and what connections you have at these companies – and this data is pushed directly into your CRM so you can easily follow up.

Leadfeeder also collects logs of the specific pages people spend the most time on, so when you reach out, you can start the conversation with relevant talking points and learn more about their intentions.

SEO and media buying agencies using Google Analytics to present PPC data to clients know that generating reports and making them readable can be a big hassle. Luckily, ReportGarden was built to solve that issue.

You can present your clients with simple, visualized, customizable, and branded reports that show them everything they need to know without bogging them down with heavy data.

Google Analytics can track web conversions, such as when a visitor registers as a user, but it can't track phone conversations, because they happen offline. With KeyMetric Call Analytics, however, it can.

This tool gives you the bigger picture of your conversion rate and provides data on which strategies result in sales, and which don't. It's particularly useful because looking only at online conversions might have you investing money in the wrong tactics, and — according to KeyMetric, anyway — 70% of website visits result in phone calls, not conversions.

4. SkyGlue makes event tracking smarter and easier

While the two fields are slowly converging, marketing and IT are still worlds apart. Traditionally, it hasn’t been part of a marketer's job to learn to code, so it's pretty common that IT people are called upon to assist with projects like setting up event tracking on marketing sites. SkyGlue was created to make that job easier — powerful event tracking with a single line of copy-pasted JavaScript. Event tracking helps you get insights into conversion rate, clicks, and the behavior of your visitors, so it’s pretty important to have.

SkyGlue also integrates with your CRM to show you which actions a lead takes on your site, and with Google AdWords, so you can correlate your onsite engagement with the specifics of your various PPC campaigns.

5. UserReport supercharges your demographics data with surveys

There's a lot of information that the demographics reports in Google Analytics won't tell you, like, for example, the reasons that visitors often don’t buy anything, specific interests, or how they felt about your website.

That's because this data isn't quantifiable by algorithms (yet) and needs human input. With UserReport, you can create surveys on your website to capture the information you need, and then feed it into Google Analytics to find out how visitors across different demographics respond to your products, copy, UX and more. UserReport is free, and it lets you ask any questions you like to your visitors.

6. Navegg provides better segmentation for your retargeting campaigns

Offering your visitors personalized content shouldn't have to be a shot in the dark. With Navegg, you can get your AdWords audiences sorted into nine tidy, dynamic segments based on demographics, interest, and purchasing power. This information allows you to run smarter PPC campaigns and target your leads with effective, relevant content.

Data from Navegg also helps you track conversion rates across different demographics to find out the specifics about your ideal customers. With that kind of insight, your marketing strategy should basically be able to write itself.

Take action to improve your analytics

It wasn't so long ago that none of these tools existed, and you were stuck with whatever analytics you could get.

Now you're set to truly harness the power of Google Analytics and make smarter business decisions based on feedback, micro-conversion data, sales intelligence and detailed demographic segmentation.

Pick one tool from the list that throws light on your biggest analytics blindspot, and get started. Which one do you use or plan to try first?

Sagi is an online marketing expert and the head of SEO at InboundJunction, a premium content marketing agency based in Israel. With his technical and creative abilities, Sagi is constantly looking for the latest SEO trends and tools to formulate a winning search strategy. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter.

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Comments

Sagi, I have to admit I try to keep up on the space but I had only heard of not heard of UserReport. I like what SkyGlue is doing with event management, however, it seems they have not upgraded their system for quite some time and still is mainly built for ga.js. http://www.mashmetrics.com/ has packages that focus on site and user actions such as Scroll Tracking, Page Counters, For Submits, File Downloads, etc.